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How Can Admins Influence the Salesforce Product Roadmap?
About this Episode
Today on the Salesforce Admins Podcast, we talk to Rebecca Sherrill, VP, and Shelly Erceg, Product Leader, both on the Salesforce Research and Insights team.
Join us as we chat about the newest updates to IdeaExchange, including RoadmapExchange and Idea Insights, and why now is the perfect time to get involved.
You should subscribe for the full episode, but here are a few takeaways from our conversation with Rebecca Sherrill and Shelly Erceg.
How feedback shapes the product roadmap
If you've ever wondered what happens after you submit an Idea to the IdeaExchange, this episode is for you. The Product Research and Insights team has been working on several new things to improve transparency and enhance collaboration between PMs and the Salesforce community.
Joining us for this episode are Rebecca Sherrill and Shelly Erceg. Rebecca started at Salesforce in user research, where she talked to, interviewed, and observed hundreds of admins to better understand their needs. "I have a huge appreciation for the admin community because I spent so much time with them during those years," she says.
Shelly, meanwhile, started as a PM on workflow and process automation tools, building products like Process Builder and part of the Flow engine. "Admins are my jam," she says. On the Product Research and Insights team, she's focused on IdeaExchange and True to the Core.
Together, they're here to tell us about how RoadmapExchange and Idea Insights will help you see how your feedback influences the product roadmap.
What is RoadmapExchange?
If you've ever submitted to IdeaExchange, it's natural to ask yourself, "How do I know if they're working on my Idea? Is it ever going to be implemented? If not, why?"
That was the impetus behind RoadmapExchange, which maps ideas to Salesforce product roadmaps. The goal is to offer a peek behind the curtain, allowing you to see what the product team is working on right now and what they're considering for the future. Most importantly, it allows the community to provide feedback and use cases to help guide the product team's decisions.
"It's an opportunity to help shape what we build," Shelly says, and it also gives you a better idea of what's coming so you don't waste resources solving a problem that the product team is already working on.
Get in on the conversation with Idea Insights
The other IdeaExchange feature that Rebecca and Shelly are really excited about is Idea Insights. After twenty years, there are a lot of ideas out there. Idea Insights provides context into what's happening right now in four key areas:
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Top Trending Ideas with the most votes overall from the past year.
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Recently Updated Ideas by the Salesforce product team.
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Top Open Ideas of all time by cloud.
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Recently Delivered Ideas to check out in the product.
The goal is to keep you up to date with everything happening on IdeaExchange. On the other side of things, the product team is making a push to provide more transparency and updates about Ideas, even if it's something that's not in the cards right now.
Finally, if you don't have a lot of time, Rebecca encourages you to take a look at the Salesforce Research Program. All you have to do is fill out a form about yourself, and you'll only be invited to participate in things that are really relevant to you—we'll even pay you for your time.
The Research and Insights team wants to hear from you, so be on the lookout for Rebecca and Shelly at a Dreamin' event near you. And don't forget to subscribe to the Salesforce Admins Podcast so you never miss an episode.
Podcast swag
Learn more
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Salesforce 360 blog: A Guide to RoadmapExchange: Your Feedback, Next Steps
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Salesforce 360 blog: Delivering on Your Feedback: Introducing Idea Insights
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Sign up: Salesforce Research Program
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Salesforce Admins blog: Introducing True to the Core Deep Dive: In-Depth Product Conversations with Salesforce PMs
Admin Trailblazers Group
Social
Full show transcript
Mike:
This week on the Salesforce Admins podcast, we're diving deep into the evolution of the IdeaExchange with two very familiar voices, Rebecca Sherrill and Shelly Erceg from Salesforce's research and insights team. They're here to unpack the newest updates like Roadmap Exchange and Idea Insights. And why now is the prime time for Salesforce admins to get reengaged with the IdeaExchange. So if you've ever wondered what happens after you submit an idea, or how your feedback actually influences the product roadmap, this episode's for you. So let's get Rebecca and Shelly on the podcast. So Shelly and Rebecca, welcome to the podcast, or should I say welcome back to the podcast?
Rebecca Sherrill:
Thank you. Super excited to be here.
Shelly Erceg:
Thank you so much.
Mike:
Both of you are veterans of the podcast, but both are back for a different reason. So Rebecca, refresh our memories from 100 years ago when you were on the podcast and what you do at Salesforce.
Rebecca Sherrill:
Yes. So I've been at Salesforce for 13 years and yes, I was on this podcast 12 years ago. I had to look that up. I started out here doing user research for our platform products, including setup. And so what that means is that in my early years at Salesforce, I talked to, interviewed and observed hundreds of admins to understand what they needed, so that we could build that into our products. So I have a huge appreciation for the admin community because I spent so much time with them during those years.
And then these days I'm leading a research and insights team. And my team continues to do research with customers to understand what they need from our products, and make sure that we build that into our roadmap. But these days, my team also runs the IdeaExchange, which is I think what we're mostly here to talk about today.
Mike:
Yeah, absolutely. And Shelly, you're a familiar voice and face in the admin community.
Shelly Erceg:
Admins are my jam. I started off at Salesforce in the platform as well, working on our workflow and process automation tools. Built Process Builder and part of the flow engine. And then also spent some time with our nonprofit customers over on the NGO side. And now I'm here in Research and Insights focused on the voice of the customer really on IdeaExchange, true to the core, and bringing back really what our customers need to our product teams.
Mike:
Yeah. So I was a huge IdeaExchange fan when I was an admin because I love to browse like, "Oh, I hope that's coming. People need to vote for it." But I think Rebecca sent me right. Like since I've been a customer and you've been around for a while, the IdeaExchange kind of changed and expanded now, hasn't it?
Rebecca Sherrill:
That's right. Yeah. So my team has been involved with IdeaExchange for the past three years. And what we've been doing during that time is really trying to bring it up to speed with the current needs of the community and with Salesforce, because so much has changed over these many years. And so most recently we have launched a new part of IdeaExchange called Roadmap Exchange, and hopefully we'll get into more details on that.
And we've also launched something called Idea Insights, which the goal of that is to bring more visibility into the ideas that are most important to the community. Kind of take a look at the signal through the noise because there are so many tens of thousands of ideas. How do we know which ones to focus on and which ones to make visible to our product teams? That's a question that we wrestle with a lot. So those are two of the very concrete ways that we have evolved IdeaExchange recently in the past couple of years.
Mike:
Well, we can always dive into different insights and roadmaps. Roadmaps are an admin's best friend, I feel like.
Rebecca Sherrill:
Yes, definitely.
Mike:
Shelly, you were a PM for a while. What was IdeaExchange for you?
Shelly Erceg:
Well, one of the things IdeaExchange was was just a great place to try to keep a pulse on what people were talking about currently. And I think that's really what we're trying to do with Idea Insights because there's so much there, right? So when I was a PM, I just thought, wow, this is just a wealth of information. But I was often overwhelmed by how much information there was there. And it can be hard for PMs to go through all of that and to pull out the things that are sort of relevant to their products and to their roadmap that they're building.
So that's one of the things that we're trying to do with Idea Insights is really pull out what's the pulse happening now? What's most relevant? What are people talking about? And try to bring that to our PMs and really highlight that so that they get a better understanding. They can just kind of more quickly see what's happening. So I always thought it was a great treasure trove, but you also had to go digging. So that's our goal. We're really trying to evolve and bring out those nuggets.
Mike:
Well, I mean, Rebecca, if you think about it, IdeaExchange ideas, at least when I was an admin, you could submit an idea of like, why can't I change this button color? All the way to why can't part of this platform do X, which is a massive idea compared to just being able to tweak the color of a button? So I think for maybe admins who have strayed away from the IdeaExchange, you mentioned Roadmap and you mentioned Idea Insights. How does those new features help teams kind of prioritize what they should be looking at and help uncover, like Shelly was saying, the mountain of ideas?
Rebecca Sherrill:
Yeah. I think Roadmap Exchange is a really great new way for product teams to do this. I'll explain a little bit more what I mean. I have long thought that when somebody creates an idea, it may feel like, oh, that's going out into the universe and we're not quite sure. And I, the person who submitted that idea, I don't know why the product team is not working on it. I don't know. Are they working on it? Are they going to deliver it? What are they doing back there anyway? What are they building right now and why are they not looking at my idea?
And so that was a little bit of the impetus behind Roadmap Exchange was, what if we could make it more visible to our community, what product teams are working on or thinking about working on? Maybe it's not on the roadmap yet, but they're considering it. What if we could make that all more visible and invite the community to come in and comment on that? Provide feedback, provide use cases, give a lot of that really rich context to our product teams, and really influence the things that are currently being worked on.
And at the same time, we could map some of the ideas to some of the roadmaps and say, "Yes, we are definitely working on some ideas, but we're also working on a lot of things that you don't know about that we would love your input on." So that is one of the ways we're thinking about this is just increasing the visibility and the opportunities for engagement between our customers and our product teams.
Mike:
I like it. Shelly, I'll ask you, but Rebecca, feel free to jump in. I would love to know, because it sounds like with the Roadmap Exchange, you kind of need that next level input. How has the ideas that admins or developers or architects, how have they evolved over the last 20 years that the IdeaExchange has been around?
Shelly Erceg:
Well, I think there was a couple of things in that question. One is I think, and Rebecca has really outlined this, with Roadmap Exchange, it's actually set up so it's kind of a different kind of experience. And we think that is a really great evolution for admins, in that we're talking about features that product managers are either considering building and need more information about, or are maybe about to start building. And it's such a great opportunity for admins to share what they need in those areas for those products, right? Their real world use cases so that we're keeping that in mind as we're building. But also on the early stages, it's an opportunity to really help shape what we build.
So I think this is actually kind of the biggest opportunity for admins in terms of spending their time and looking at where they can make an impact because this is when PMs are actually in the process and actively gathering this kind of feedback and wanting to have that conversation. I think over time people are also on the IdeaExchange. They're understanding a little bit more that what's most helpful is not just saying, "I want to be able to do X with Y," but really describing the business context that you're working in.
When customers and Trailblazers tell us what they're trying to achieve, it's super, super helpful for the PM. Because then we actually get the idea of what you're really trying to do. And it may not be that we provide you exactly what you ask, but we provide you a way to solve that problem. So I would just say that continuing that evolution of that kind of more sophisticated dialogue is really going to be helpful.
Mike:
Absolutely. Rebecca, can you tell me a little bit more about Idea Insights?
Rebecca Sherrill:
Yes. Idea Insights launched this past September, October around DreamForce. And this is a new page on IdeaExchange where you can see the all time top ideas, the recently delivered ideas. Recently commented on ideas meaning that a product manager from Salesforce has left a comment or an update, and the top trending ideas. And trending ideas in particular is a new concept for us. It's showing the ideas that have received the most upvotes in the past year. And what I really like about this is, again, if you're an IdeaExchange user and you're creating a new idea, you might think, how is there any chance that my idea is going to get any eyes on it?
Because there are some ideas that have been on there for many years and have had a lot of time to collect votes. And there's no way that my new idea that's been around for one week can get the number of votes that an idea has that's been on there for 10 years. So what this does is really gives us visibility into the current ideas that are getting a lot of recent traction. And I think gives us potentially a better pulse on what's important to the community right now? And it does give a better chance for folks to get their ideas noticed by product teams because we are elevating this as a new view that people can use to look at.
Mike:
Yeah. The thing that I sit back, and even with these new features, if you were to strip all of those new features away. The thing that I still sit back and kind of I'm a bit of awe about is I have yet to find another company that I actively participate with that tells me, "Hey, here's where we think things are going. Or here's the stuff we're working on." I don't get any of that with the iPhone. I don't get any of that like, "I'm drinking a Coke Zero. I'd love to give them feedback on this lid that is the loudest lid in the world," but I don't have that, right?
For this to be out in just the world for admins and developers to just sit back and kind of be in reasonable awe about it is like, "Oh man, that's kind of cool. Now I got an idea of stuff to look for in the release notes."
Shelly Erceg:
Yeah, it's terrific. And we really get why it's so important for our customers to understand where we're going. And our biggest push over the last year has been around more transparency and more up ... we're trying to provide more updates on ideas. And admins have told us, frankly, even if you're not going to be able to deliver that, tell us that. Because we understand people are trying to plan for their business. They need to know whether or not they need to build something, whether they need to work with somebody on the app exchange to solve the gap potentially. Or whether they know that we're providing a solution for them. And that's really, really important.
So we've had a really big push and we've had somebody dedicated to program-wise to just getting updates from PMs about whether or not they're going to be able to tackle some of the ideas. Trying to provide updates to the top ideas so that we can provide more transparency in that. And I think we are really unique in that way, and we know that it has a big impact on planning and on people's businesses. So it's great to be able to try to increase that.
Mike:
Yeah. Well, you mentioned a lot of lanes, and Rebecca, you mentioned launching the new Idea Insights at DreamForce. So Dreamforce famously has True to the Core as a very popular session. I know this is a track lead because none of the speakers want to be opposite of True to the Core. And recently we just launched, I believe it's on LinkedIn, True to the Core Deep Dive. I had Leanne on to talk about that. So help me understand if you're a new admin or even if you've been around for a while, what's the difference between True to the Core and IdeaExchange?
Rebecca Sherrill:
Yes, great question. And we love True to the Core, the keynote. And speaking of ways in which I think Salesforce is unique, we organize that keynote and we often get the feedback, "Wow, I can't believe Salesforce still does this." Or even from folks inside of Salesforce who are new, who watch it for the first time and say, "Oh my gosh, I can't believe that we provide this amount of transparency. And it's totally unscripted and unpredictable and really authentic." So yeah, that just kind of follows onto what you were saying about how we have a pretty unique offering, I think, in terms of our ways of collecting feedback.
But to your question about the difference between these channels. You can think of True to the Core as a point in time live opportunity to engage with our product leaders and our product teams. So of course, the keynotes at both Dreamforce and TDX are with our most senior product leaders. And then the new monthly series is with specific product teams and it gives us an opportunity to go deeper and have that live conversation and live engagement.
IdeaExchange, on the other hand, we see that as an always on channel. Meaning you can engage with it whenever you have time. You can kind of monitor it, get updates. So it's a little bit of point in time and more in depth, and always on, always available feedback channel. And the two are very complimentary. So for example, if a team is doing a true to the core deep dive, we can have them look at their top ideas on IdeaExchange, and engage with the community about those ideas during that phone call and during that conversation.
Mike:
Yeah. I know in True the Core Deep Dive and even true the core at Dreamforce, sometimes the questions are very specific. And you can always kind of read a PM's face by, "Oh boy, this one's going to be a tough one. We're going to have to have three or four people to answer it." So I'm sure it can be that way in the IdeaExchange.
Shelly, I think it's interesting, it dawned on me that you're probably one of the rare few people at Salesforce that has perspective on both sides of an idea from both being a PM and having to look and read ideas and respond to them. To now working with customers and understanding the IdeaExchange and reading through the ideas as they come in and probably work with customers, I don't want to put words in your mouth. But work with customers as they're building these ideas. What insight can you provide that I think is a learning having been on both sides of that idea as it would be?
Shelly Erceg:
Yeah, it's a really interesting position and one I enjoy a lot, because I've kind of got this full picture, or at least a lot of the picture anyway. I'll say from the PM side and just thinking about ideas, PMs really, really want to deliver what people need, and I always did as well. There are often complicated contexts or a lot of constraints around how we can do that. And so I know sometimes on the idea side, something can seem very, very obvious as to why doesn't Salesforce fix this?
And I actually recently made something for my colleagues in research and insights called How a PM Decides. And it was a massive matrix of all the factors that went into PM decision making. Everything from business strategy to whether or not fixing something required the coordination, even though if the fixing "was actually quite technically easy." But if it required the coordination of several teams across the platform, then that raised the complexity, right?
So you're always trying to juggle, what can I get done with the people I have? Do I have the expertise to fix that? Will I be able to work with other teams? Or are there roadmaps pulling them somewhere where I know I won't get their time? So it's always such a matrix trying to figure out what you can deliver. But I will say that there is just this push for PMs to deliver value. And on the other side, I think really the goal is that we need to provide as much transparency about that as possible. Because I think people really do understand once we talk with them. I know the conversations I've had with customers when I've said, "Hey, this doesn't look like something I'm going to be able to provide, and here's why." People get it because we're all human.
So I just want to say keep the ideas and sharing your use cases, keep that coming. It's all super, super helpful. We're working, it's work you probably don't hear about because it's invisible. But my team is also working on ways to more efficiently get these ideas and input that internal employees get from their conversations with customers into the product life cycle. So we're working a lot on that and being able to give PMs a better view of what their customers need in particular areas. So I would just say absolutely just keep erring on the side. Your voice is not going into the ether we promise. Just keep erring on the side of sharing what you're trying to accomplish and know that there's a really big effort to continue making customers successful.
Mike:
Yeah. I think sometimes you have to look at the volume that comes in and you're like, you're so glad everybody's engaged. But on the other hand, you're like, "I can't get all this done today." At least I would feel that way. So Rebecca, I'm not going to end on a sour note. This won't be our last question, but I want to play devil's advocate for a second. Admins are super busy throughout the day. They got users that constantly forget their passwords. They got agents they're building. Why should I post my idea to the IdeaExchange?
Rebecca Sherrill:
I love this question. At first, yes, I just want to acknowledge that the admin role has become way more complex over the past 20 years at the IdeaExchange has been in existence. When the IdeaExchange launched, we only had Sales Cloud. We didn't even have Service Cloud. And now I think if I talk to your average admin, they are managing a whole suite of products and the interdependencies between those and the integrations. And it's just so much more complex. And I have, again, just a real appreciation for how busy and how demanding those jobs are for our admin community.
So I would say we are listening. We cannot build great products without deeply understanding what you need and why you need it. And that is the number one reason why I would love for folks to continue engaging in IdeaExchange. Maybe you haven't been there in a while, maybe you are feeling like it wasn't getting looked at. To Shelly's point, we are doing a lot of work right now behind the scenes to evolve that, to change that. So I would love for folks to give us another try. I would love for folks to check out Roadmap Exchange.
I'll also give a shout-out that if you are limited in time and you want to really focus your efforts and how you provide feedback to Salesforce, check out the research program. You can sign up to do a one-on-one session, or a survey to influence some of the research work that's happening within our teams. And those are very, very focused. Like you can fill out a form that tells us which products you use, a bit of information about yourself and your company. And we will only invite you to participate in things that are really relevant to you. So that can be a really great way to give focused feedback.
You also get an incentive for your time as a reimbursement. So it can be just a really nice way. Again, if you're limited on time and you don't want to be writing ideas, you can have a conversation with a researcher on the team, and that's another way to influence the product roadmap.
Mike:
I would agree. There's always something, some way to engage, right? I had to look at my schedule because last week we kicked off the new year talking with the admin evangelists, and kind of forward looking for 2026. So since we're fresh into 2026 when this episode airs, if you had kind of your New Year's resolution for admins on the IdeaExchange. And I'll switch it up, Shelly, I'll start with you. What would your New Year's resolution for admins on the IdeaExchange be?
Shelly Erceg:
To deliver to admins?
Mike:
I will let you read that question however you choose.
Shelly Erceg:
Okay.
Mike:
I will be deliberately vague as a host to see what the guest is going to say that's interesting.
Shelly Erceg:
Wonderful. Wonderful. Well, I'll say that 2026 for us really, I'm looking forward to talking to more admins. And we're going to be going out to some of the Dreamin' events because we really want to keep evolving. So we've come out with Idea Insights and Roadmap Exchange. We know some of the core things that admins really need. I want to make sure that these things are hitting and if we can evolve them further to provide for what's really going to be helpful to admins. And I just want to hear what our Trailblazer community has to say.
So we're going to go to, I hope, three or four different Dreamin' events. And we're going to be out there at TDX, of course, and Dreamforce. And be just looking to spend more time listening to admins, finding out what it is they need and how we can help.
Mike:
Yeah. Rebecca, you've been around admins for a long time. If you had a 2026 New Year's resolution for admins on the IdeaExchange, what would it be?
Rebecca Sherrill:
From our team's perspective, I just want us to drive as much engagement between our product teams and the community as possible. And to Shelly's point, for our team, what that means is we're going to go to some Dreamin' events and connect live with customers. And that's a little bit of our New Year's resolution is let's get closer to understand if the work we are doing is landing. And how we can continue to improve and get that continuous feedback loop. If I were to kind of put out there an aspirational, I don't know if it's resolution, more of a wish for our community, I want people to feel heard. I want them to know that we really do appreciate the time and the thought that they put into these feedback channels.
That we are doing our best to listen. We know we have room to grow, we have space to do better. But I do want, at the end of the day, I want to make sure that they're heard and that they have the transparency they need to make the decisions that they need to make. So yeah, Shelly and I, our doors are always open. We love to hear from the community how we can continue to improve that for them.
Mike:
Well, that'd be very cool. I bet everybody's going to be excited to have you at community Dreamin' events. Those are always fun. And you have a lot of vocal people that attend our events, so bring a lot of extra paper to take notes.
Shelly Erceg:
We love it.
Mike:
Shelly, Rebecca, thank you for coming on the podcast. Again, I'll have to have you back, but hopefully not when you switch again. Just stay at the IdeaExchange and make it awesome.
Shelly Erceg:
Planning on it. Thank you so much.
Rebecca Sherrill:
Thank you, Mike.
Mike:
Big thanks to Rebecca and Shelly for joining us on the podcast. I enjoyed having them share how the IdeaExchange is evolving to better serve Salesforce admins. So whether you're posting a new idea or diving into the Roadmap Exchange, your feedbacks truly helps shape the future of Salesforce. So don't forget that your voice matters. And hey, if you're headed to any kind of the community Dreamin' events this year, keep an eye out for them. They're doing a listening tour. So with that, until next time, we'll see you in the cloud.
Hosts & Guests
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